Wild Held Items in Emerald Legacy: What Every Pokemon Carries

Wild held items are how you get a long list of good items without paying for them, and they're the reason Thief and Covet earn a party slot on any collection run. Every species in the data has up to two held-item slots: a common slot that lands about half the time, and a rare slot closer to one in twenty.

That gap is the whole strategy. If the item you want is in a rare slot, expect to fight the same Pokemon twenty times; if you're chasing something in the common slot, it's a short trip. And Thief takes the item mid-battle, so you don't have to win the fight -- which matters when you're farming something that hits hard.

Common held items

Rare held items

The farming list. Bring Thief.

Same item in both slots

These species hold their item whichever slot rolls, making them the most reliable target on the page.

How to farm them without losing your mind

• Lead with Thief or Covet. Both steal the held item during the battle, so a failed catch doesn't cost you the item.
• Compound Eyes in the lead slot improves your odds in this generation. It's worth a spare party slot if you're farming a rare-slot item.
• A Pokemon that can't be stolen from is a Pokemon you'll fight twenty times. If a species only appears on one route at 4%, work out the real cost before you commit an evening to it.
• Several evolution items are wild held items, which is often faster than hunting the shop that sells them -- evolution items lists which ones and where else they turn up.

Where these numbers come from: Emerald Legacy's extracted held-item data -- 46 items across 129 Pokemon slots, with each entry's rarity slot as the ROM records it.